5 things: bird book binding, baby housemate, the water outlaws, tgcf chapter summaries, sun migraine

[sophia_sol]

one

I went through a series of thoughts on mastodon about how to access bird info when out birding in the field. I will present them to you as originally posted:

4:07 p.m.

I wish the merlin app had space for you to add your own notes to each bird listing, with additional details of things you want to remember beyond what the app has in its brief description of the bird!

me like. this is how I end up building my own personal bird app next year isn't it......

I need to put up a warding sign against this future for myself lol

4:13 p.m.

I already started working last year on helpful write-ups of each type of waterfowl in its winter plumage and the important things to pay attention to in differentiating each from the other types of waterfowl that might be seen passing through my area

now I just need a way to put these into a format or program wherein I can easily search the name to pull up the relevant description.

and put in every other bird in north america also.

4:15 p.m.

oh god. is this how I become a person who drafts and prints and hand-binds a physical copy of my own personal field guide to birds of ontario.

4:19 p.m.

damn the more I think about this the more I'm like. SO EXCITED about the possibility? of my own field guide containing the things that are priorities for my personal needs?? I'll have to think a bunch about how to set it up in the ideal way for myself, and what size to print it, etc. and I'll have to cobble together a LOT of content. but this is so promising as a concept.

4:39 p.m.

future me going birding: using ebird plus merlin sound ID on my phone, managing my external mic, plus my handbound field guide, plus my binoculars. I think I need four hands.

4:42 p.m.

it's possible I ALSO need to sew a custom shoulder bag to make it as easy as possible to access each of these items as needed while out looking for birds

ideal shoulder bag would have a spot for the bins, for the field guide, for the mic and phone, for a water bottle, for any additional clothing layers I've taken off, and for the camera which I would also like to someday own. each pocket nicely designed to fit exactly what it's intended for, and easy to access without any rummaging.

two

I have learned that my housemates deliberately dress Baby Housemate in clothes that will be to my taste (eg themed with birds, dinosaurs, space, etc) whenever they bring him to the twice weekly housemate dinner, and I'm just SO charmed by this

three

I listened to the Master of Demon Gorge Podcast episode on Water Margin and now I'm even more interested in getting round to reading SL Huang's novel, The Water Outlaws, which is inspired by it!

the host of MoDG discussed the difference in the fate of the characters and the meaning of the story being told between the multiple different versions of Water Margin: the 70 chapter version or the 120 chapter version. and how people are still debating what exactly the novel is intending to say!

also he talked about the misogyny and the degree of violence of the original book - and Huang's novel is specifically focused on female and queer characters

so The Water Outlaws is now placed more contextually for me in the conversations it's a part of, which I always appreciate in stories that are drawing on things from other stories!

four

ohoho I DID IT I put a page of chapter summaries for TGCF onto my neocities page!

https://soph-sol.neocities.org/tgcf-chapter-summaries

there are many things my website still needs done to it but I have created a Useful Page and I am very pleased

five

me searching the internet with keywords "sun headache" and finding out that probably when I get a headache after being out in the sun for a long time, either I'm getting heat exhaustion or a migraine, and I'm not getting heat exhaustion

me tuning into my current headache and noting that it is distinctly one-sided pain

me remembering that I've noticed in the past that when I get headaches from sun exposure, ibuprofen doesn't work as well as when I get headaches for other reasons

.....well shit I think I get mild migraines from sunlight

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

*loyally* I would use your bird guide if we had the same birds! Very impressed by the gear situation; I like the imagined birding bandolier.

[sophia_sol]

awwww <3 I am actually now planning a gear belt I'm going to make for myself lol

[luzula]

The personal bird guide sounds like a fun project! *encourages*

[sophia_sol]

<3333

[mecurtin]

I absolutely would be interested in your personalizeable bird app or Merlin add-on, to the point of $$. JSYK.

For family & health reasons I haven't birded in the field much for the last 5 years, but now I've got a better pair of eyeglasses and I'm about to go on a trip to an area new to me (Olympic Peninsula). This is my first real birding trip since Merlin came in, so I'd like some advice on how you use Merlin/ebird in the field. Or a pointer to a post/video of someone doing in the way you do.

My biggest issue with birding apps (& photography) these days is that I need separate glasses for distance and near vision, bifocals make me queasy. So I can't rapidly go between looking at the bird and looking at my phone.

[sophia_sol]

Coding an app is at this point I think beyond me, unfortunately!

In terms of how I use ebird and merlin in the field...I think it might not work well for you because I do rapidly look between bird and phone.

Something that might work better for you is a strategy I know is used by some older birders from the days before smartphones, which is to carry a small audio recorder around with you when you're out birding. When you see a bird, stare at it for as long as you need to, while talking quietly to your audio recorder about all the details you notice about the bird. And if you see/hear any birds you can ID in the field, you can mention that into your recorder as well.

Then you can review your saved audio at a later time, when you're at home with your field guides, to figure out what it was you must have seen. And then using all your bird IDs, both the ones you managed in the field and said into the recorder, plus the ones you figured out at home, create an after-the-fact ebird list.

That way you don't have to spend much time using your close vision while you're in the field!

[pauraque]

I have my own spreadsheets listing my notes on the birds I have seen and where I have seen them, even though much of the same information is on my eBird account, so I don't think making your own field guide is weird! Recently I was browsing way back in the historical sightings on an eBird hotspot and found that someone had uploaded scans of their handwritten field notes from decades past, which I thought was great.

[sophia_sol]

I love that! having those kinds of historical records in ebird is so important for scientists studying birds, to be able to have more data about bird sightings from birders in the time before ebird existed!

[lokifan]

I have learned that my housemates deliberately dress Baby Housemate in clothes that will be to my taste (eg themed with birds, dinosaurs, space, etc) whenever they bring him to the twice weekly housemate dinner, and I'm just SO charmed by this

Awww!

The custom field guide is a great idea tbh

And YES as a genre theory person I loooooove when you get more context for the conversation a book's part of.

[sophia_sol]

<3